Louisiana Newspaper Raises Questions About Brian Williams' Katrina Stories

[kpete]

NBC News anchor Brian Williams' comments about dead bodies, Hurricane Katrina starting to gain attention, draw scrutiny


The Advocate newspaper published a story on Friday that explored two of Williams' accounts from his reporting on the 2005 disaster and its aftermath. Several conservative news websites first cast doubt on those stories earlier this week.

Williams said in a 2006 interview that he had watched the body of a man float by him in New Orleans' famed French Quarter.

"When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country," Williams said.

But as the Advocate pointed out, the French Quarter is situated in an elevated part of the city. Various media reports since 2005 have noted that the tourist-heavy neighborhood was spared from the kind of devastating flooding that the Lower Ninth Ward suffered.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/brian-williams-katrina-questioned
http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11526453-148/nbc-news-anchor-brian-williams

[MohRokTah]

1. Brian Williams' very bad week.

I remember people being confused about his stories back during Katrina because of the elevation of the French Quarter.

[LiberalArkie]

2. The problem as I see it is that Brian is interjecting himself as a character in the story

"I saw bodies floating" vs "people seeing bodies floating" The second is what a journalist would say, the first is what a Fox nooz person would say.

[Malraiders]

3. The military is saying that even William's apology is

in fact a lie.

You can read the following from: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/06/brian-williams-apology-challenged-why-hes-too-big-to-fail/


In his “Nightly News” apology, Williams said he was “instead on a following aircraft,” and he wrote on Facebook that “I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG.”

But Stars & Stripes, which broke the story, contradicts this account in a second piece.

David Luke, a flight engineer in the 159th Aviation Regiment out of Savannah, said it was “misleading” for Williams to say he was in the following chopper. He said his formation of three Chinooks, which included Williams, happened to pass another helicopter company heading in the opposite direction. It was the second group of choppers that was attacked.

Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, a flight engineer, said the NBC crew placed a mike in one of the helicopter’s headsets and later broadcast clips of radio reports from the Chinook company that was attacked. That, according to them, is as close as Williams got to the action.

At the same time, Rich Krell, the pilot of Williams’ copters, told CNN that while the anchor said some things that are untrue, the aircraft was hit by small-arms file. According to that account, Williams was in a dangerous situation—just not as dangerous as he later claimed.

Just about everyone at NBC is mum. But “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd, in an interview with columnist Matt Lewis, said: “I know he’s mortified by this and even more mortified because veterans are so––I mean, the last group of people he wants to offend are veterans, and that’s, you know, stinging him the most.”